University of
Pipi-Tipi-Woo-Hoo
THE DEPARTMENT OF POLITICALLY ABSURD CULTURE[i]
COURSES FOR A SUMMER SCHOOL
98.101 Introduction to the Self
Each student will be given a small hand mirror and told to stare in
it each morning. At class, cellophane
cut-outs of characters from popular novels, television drama and
twitter-messages are distributed and students pass them around until each one
has identified with at least three of the characters. The cut-outs are then
pasted on the body. Everyone guesses who
he or she is supposed to be. The winner
may run for president.
98.102 Impacts and Constructivist Aesthetics
A course in pointless personal art and literary appreciation. Second-rate poetry and short stories are
hoisted into an aerial balloon above a large stadium or administrative
office. The books are dropped at
random. Students showing the greatest
impact then express their emotions. Only
jargon and neologism may be used.
98.103 Literature and Anal Bromides
A
special course for future ministers of education, members of associations based
on BDS principles, and dysfunctional family heads.[ii] Teams are chosen among students who read out
long lists of clichés, commonplace and platitudes. The first team to fall totally asleep is
forced to have lunch with the vice chancellor.
98.201 The Sincerity of Nature
A tearful reading of all the minor poetry in Palaver's Golden Trashery. The entire second term will be spent mooning over the inanities
of Coventry Patmore, William Wordsworth’s later sonnets against railways and
canals, and the complete political writings and other vacuous speeches of
B.H.O.[iii]
98.202 Irony and Dish-Water
A
unique course offered at no other university.
This presents intending nuclear physicists and grave-diggers with an
opportunity to discuss the subtleties of dish-soap commercials. An historical perspective is given by
constant reference to the Abyssinian Talmud.
98.203 Shakespeare's Double
A reading of all the plays in the pseudo-Shakespearean canon
attributed to Bacon, Marlow and Christopher Robin. By dialectical analysis of Two Bumbling Locksmiths in Vienna,[iv]
it is shown that Shakespeare was someone else of the same name, that his mother
never served spaghetti on toast and that Ann Smith fell off the second best
bed. A silent film of the entire oeuvre may be submitted in lieu of a
research essay.
98.207 Hypochondria
and the Familiar Essay
Intensive
study of four unwritten essays by the leading thinkers of the early
Renaissance: Anonymous, Incomplete, Rob Muldoon and Chidiock Tichbourne. Only available on the Scilly Isles and in
Gigglesworth in England.
98.305 The
American North
Out of the sweeping history of the Dakota badlands come the searing
novels and poetry of America's best known authors. Why bother with women, blacks, Jews,
intellectuals when you can sit back, light up a 5¢ seegar and enjoy the full
repertoire of Farrago and Bismark.
98.311 Early
Literature
A thoroughly footnoted, nose-wiped and arse-licked course in the
kindergarten writings of major authors.
Thrill to William Blake’s infantile ramblings. Weep with Henry Miller as he pees on the
floor. Tremble as Keri Hulme begs for her mummy to cook her salty porridge. Or you may choose any unknown, forgotten or
inane winners of the Nobel Prize for Litter, the Man-Booger Prize, the Bullet
Surprise, etc.
98.505 Graduate
Research: Strategic Forgetting and Political Lies
A close rhetorical, structuralist and post-deconstructionist study
of vice-presidential memos, leaked documents from the KGB, or the Unpublished
Speeches of Yasser Arafat. All lectures
will be held in the lift in B-block, accompanied by stereophonic bagpipe music.
[i] This was actually written more than 25 years ago, at a time when,
still somewhat youthful in my daring, I would leave copies around the tea-rooms
in the university for the delectation and shock of colleagues, who suspected but
never quite guessed who was doing it.
[ii] This can be adjusted in
your own mind to fit whatever country’s bureaucrats (tischenkopfs) you feel
appropriate.
[iii] Perhaps no one under
fifty will recognize these names and I dare not attempt to wrack my brain for
allusions to contemporary authors I have never read. Suffice to say that when I was an
undergraduate studying 19th century poetry (which I loathed) the
professor would have the same questions for each person: Was he (there were
never she’s) sincere about Nature?
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